ldsphilosopher

Nathan Richardson

Occasionally I have heard comments from people that reflect a misunderstanding of the Savior’s teachings about repentance and forgiveness. In a previous post (The Benefits of Sin?), I told how one person put it: “I think that sometimes it’s good that we sin, because of how we grow in the process of overcoming it.” This suggestion in effect says, “It is sometimes necessary for us to sin in order to learn certain lessons, such as about love and forgiveness.” Sometimes the parable of the two debtors is used as a proof text (Luke 7:40–43). In it, the Savior says that of two debtors who had their debts forgiven, the one who owed more felt more love toward the creditor. It’s easy to see how some might hear that parable and conclude, “Well, I guess the more I sin, the more I will love the Lord. So sinning is actually a good thing.”

In this post, I will explain some problematic implications of this mistaken notion. First, I want to Continue There's more!

Brief Reflections on Evil: Part 2

Jeffrey Thayne

In the first post of this series, I discussed how the existence of moral agency necessarily entails the possibility of sin. Few Latter-day Saints try to pin responsibility on God for malice and hatred in the world—we generally recognize these to be the result of man’s exercise of agency, and a necessary possibility in a world with moral agents. However, what people generally want to know, as C. S. Lewis says, is “the reason for the enormous permission to torture their fellows which God gives to the worst of men.”

An Appeal to Agency does Not Work

Nazi concentration camp. Even when all temporal freedoms have been removed, we still have choices we are free to make in the silence of our souls.

Occasionally a person will answer this question by saying, “God cannot physically prevent someone from hurting people because that would interfere with his agency.” I have never believed that an appeal to human agency completely answers this question, because it does not stand to reason that preventing a person from maliciously killing another denies that person his agency. I have always believed that even if a person is kept in a straitjacket in a jail cell in order to prevent him or her from inflicting harm on others, his or her agency is still intact—that is, his or her desire to inflict harm is still a choice within his or her reach. No mortal restrictions will remove all of our choices. As Viktor Frankl said,

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to Continue There's more!

Nathan Richardson

Del Parson, At Her Master’s Feet. When a woman who had made severe mistakes washed the Savior’s feet, the Lord gave the parable of the two debtors to teach about forgiveness of sins.

The Savior spoke parables in order to teach eternal truths. The Bible Dictionary points out that “the application of a parable may vary in every age and circumstance,”¹ so we shouldn’t be surprised if several valid meanings can be drawn out of any one parable. However, just because a parable can be applied several different ways does not mean that any or every possible interpretation is true.

The Parable of the Two Debtors

There is one particular parable that I would like to discuss: the parable of the two debtors. While I do not claim to know all the profound and true interpretations one could make with this parable, I do know one interpretation we can rule out as incorrect.

I focus on this parable because it has implications in answering the problem of evil. In this series, I hope to show how understanding the nature of sin helps us better understand this mortal test and how a good God can allow evil. The misunderstanding itself, in fact, is a testimony of just how powerful the atonement is. First though, let me Continue There's more!

Brief Reflections about Evil: Part 1

Jeffrey Thayne

Truman Madsen, a Latter-day Saint and a philosopher, said that for some “the most staggering objection to belief in a personal God is the ugly, tragic, overwhelming fact of human inequality and suffering.” ¹ Although I am personally not presented with any crisis of faith when presented with the facts of human suffering (I sincerely hope our readers do not see this as lack of compassion), many do experience difficulties, and this has led apologists to attempts solutions to this problem.

James Faulconer explains what, exactly, the challenge is:

The argument is that if God is all-loving, all-powerful, and all-knowing, then the existence of evil is inexplicable, for such a God could create a world without evil—he has the power and the knowledge to do so—and he would create it, for his love would require that he do so. According to the argument, therefore, the existence of God is incompatible with the existence of evil. For many, the suppressed conclusion is that it is irrational to believe in God if one recognizes the existence of evil, as most people do.²

Subdividing the Problem

In this series, I have no intention of completely resolving the issue, or presenting any conclusive answers. I do not claim to know why people suffer. I would only like to present a few thoughts I have had about the issue. Many scholars will recognize that the problem of evil as described above is a conglomeration of several, more subtle, challenges. I would like to divide the challenge into five different topics. By dividing the problem in the following way, Continue There's more!

The Persuasive Power of Science: Part 3

Jeffrey Thayne

Hammer and screw. A tool is much more effective when you know how to use it right, including its limitations.

In my previous two posts, I explained how experimentation can never verify or falsify scientific theories. Does this mean that science is useless? Far from it. Scientific methods and experimentation can certainly be a very persuasive tool, and a useful way of making sense of the world. As I explained in the first post of this series, experimentation is a kind of logical argument. Why is logic persuasive? Some philosophers have believed that logic is persuasive because it is a manifestation of reason, and reason is our conduit to divine knowledge. Logic, in this sense, is our eye into the abstract structure of reality. Brent Slife and Richard Williams explain a different way of understanding logic (and science); in this post, I will draw heavily upon their writings (with our readers’ forgiveness):

There is another explanation for the persuasiveness of logical arguments. This explanation holds that logical arguments are based on Continue There's more!

Philosophy of Law Notes: Part 4

Jeffrey Thayne

Aristotle believed that there were abstract truths, or natural laws, in response to which men formed positive laws. This was accompanied by a distinction between theoretical and practical reason; while theoretical reason would tell us that it is wrong to steal, practical reason might tell us how long a robber ought to remain imprisoned for theft, etc. This distinction was important to Aristotle, because it rooted laws into an eternal cosmic order, but also allowed flexibility in the enactment of laws due to varying human circumstances. It allowed for a heterogeneity of laws across various nations and times. It also recognized the distinction between natural law and positive law; the prohibition against robbery is a natural law (or natural reason, a glimpse into the cosmic order), but that a robber would spend three years in prison is a positive law, and is as binding on the conscience as the dictates of natural reason. Positive laws are enacted and made binding by a legislature, and Aristotle believed that they must be written in order to be considered laws.

Only One, Universal Law

Cicero. According to Cicero, in a sense, law is one and the same with conscience, or those natural principles of right and wrong which we all can discern.

According to Letwin, Cicero ignored this distinction. Letwin explains that according to Cicero, “‘Law is not the product of human thought’ nor any enactment of peoples.”¹ It is not a human invention. Thus, there is no such thing as positive law in Cicero’s worldview; there are only the dictates of reason, which are binding as law regardless of legal enactment. Cicero said, “Reason did not first become law when it was written down, but when it first came into existence.”¹ “In short,” says Letwin, “Cicero identified ‘law’ with ‘reason,’ and by reason he meant the directing principles of the universe.”¹

Let’s decode this: Aristotle and Plato both recognized the need to “translate” the eternal verities of reason into positive laws enacted by a legislature of some kind; this would naturally introduce human fallibility into the picture of law. Cicero did not see the need for this. This is because, for Cicero, the eternal verities of reason do not need Continue There's more!

The Persuasive Power of Science: Part 2

Jeffrey Thayne

In my previous post, I explained how experimentation is essentially a kind of logical argument. Based upon this assumption, I demonstrated how experimentation alone could never indubitably prove a hypothesis true, because whenever we conclude that our theory is true on the basis of observation, we have committed a logical fallacy known as affirming the consequent.

A philosopher of science known for pointing this out, Karl Popper, presented an alternative view of science, which is sometimes referred to as falsificationism. Rather than prove things true, he said, experiments should be designed to prove things false. The logical argument could be laid out like this:

If theory x is true, we will observe y.
We do not observe y.
Therefore, theory x is not true.

The logic of this syllogism is valid; there are no fallacies here. Thus, science would be useful for discarding false theories, one by one. From this point of view, there are no theories proven true; only theories that have yet to be falsified. This change of rhetoric avoids the logical mess of verification.

Popper’s point of view, however, is not without problems. Brent Slife and Richard Williams explain:

The strategy of falsification will not work unless we are sure that our test or experiment is Continue There's more!

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Homosexuality and Eating Disorders, part 2

Nathan Richardson

For the first part of this satirical conversation, read “A Modest Lifestyle Proposal.” In it, two people converse about anorexia and bulimia, and what factors might lead to people getting involved in eating disorders. The first speaker (regular typeface) uses arguments in favor of eating disorders that are very similar to the ones most advocates of the homosexual lifestyle use. The second speaker (bold typeface) questions the coherency and conclusions of those arguments.

It baffles me that such a rationale has become accepted today, even by the educated—not for eating disorders, but for homosexuality. One of the greatest injustices of this deceptive “logic” is that it has discouraged so many people from seeking needed help. Even more alarming is that it has been used to encourage so many more to participate in a lifestyle that is deadly both spiritually and physically. Imagine the outrage if such rhetoric was used to encourage bulimia and anorexia?¹
Continue There's more!

Homosexuality and Eating Disorders, part 1

Nathan Richardson

In 1729, Jonathan Swift wrote a satirical piece called “A Modest Proposal,” in which he facetiously suggests that people start eating children in order to solve hunger problems. Swift did not hate children or actually think eating them was a good idea. Being satire, the purpose of his paper was to expose distorted reasoning by applying it to an obviously absurd scenario.

In like manner, the following is an attempt to reveal the distorted reasoning surrounding advocacy of the homosexual lifestyle and agenda by applying that reasoning to eating disorders. The purpose of this fictional dialogue is to demonstrate how irrational those arguments can be. Continue There's more!